Recorded violence and murder is, sadly, nothing new. Islamic State extremists have been broadcasting beheadings online for more than a year now. But as I watched this violence unfold on Facebook, I realized I was witnessing something different. It was a turning point for mobile technology and social media, a day when our tech universe folded in on itself as it became a platform for a murderer to log and broadcast his heinous acts.

I love technology and everything it’s given us. I never hesitate to try out the latest thing. But here was someone who took devices and platforms that are designed for us to connect, and twisted them until they were almost unrecognizable.

ISIS' work is more calculated. It’s cynical, blood-splattered PR for their cause. Vester Flanagan, whose on-air name was Bryce Williams, used his smartphone, Facebook and Twitter as it suited his needs at the moment, like a social media-adept vacationer with deadly intent — using them to record and tweet about the shooting death of Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, 27.

As I watched the video –- wishing all the while that I hadn't found it — I couldn’t stop thinking: Did he shoot it like a video game because he was trying to recreate the violence he’d seen on game console screens?

I doubt it. He chose the tool in his pocket and held it in a way that made sense. He wanted to chronicle his acts, but if he actually planned to use the phone during his crime, why hadn’t he recorded something in advance to explain his motive, or maybe something at the end to tell the world what he had just done?

True, he broadcast his actions in a burst of tweets after the shooting. But it seemed an act carried out by a digital native, one who only knows one way to operate: online and out loud. He captured what he did and then tweeted about it on Twitter and shared the video on Facebook.

I’d found that video because I assumed that Flanagan had a presence on all the popular platforms. As I often do when the police have a suspect in a violent, high-profile crime, I started searching social platforms for his name. I often start by searching LinkedIn — because, unlike Twitter and Facebook, there isn't much point in creating a fake account on the largely business-and networking-focused platform.

I quickly found Flanagan’s public LinkedIn profile. His resume detailed a two-decade long career both in and outside journalism since his graduation from San Francisco State University with a broadcasting degree in the early 1990s. He listed himself as a “multimedia journalist” for WDBJ. The page linked to his Facebook page, which is where — like countless others — I discovered the gut-wrenching, autoplaying video. (His LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts have all subsequently been taken down).

While we can’t say to what extent Flanagan planned his acts (there are reports he sent a lengthy manifesto to media outlets before the murders), I am not convinced he had planned out how he would use social media in advance.

On Facebook, he didn’t even bother with a description. He just posted the video, maybe an hour or two after taking it. The video is unspeakably horrible. You see the shooter's outstretched arm holding the gun. His victims are in the background, unaware that he’s pointing a gun at them. After the shooting, Flanagan appears to drop the camera, but he clearly picks it up again before fleeing the scene.

When I first started watching the Facebook video, I was incredulous. This video can’t be real. It’s up here too soon. It’s POV. It has to be fake. But I had also seen the live WDBJ7 video shot through Ward’s camera and the scene matched it exactly, except for the perspective behind the cameraman. I imagined Flanagan racing away from the scene and fiddling with his phone, which had to have LTE. Maybe he stopped to tweet, though I’m pretty sure he was on the run until police tried to stop him.

Flanagan’s use of digital technology and social media made the real-time nature of his crime even more terrifying. Using the same technology that each of us use every day to share our happiest and saddest thoughts, our biggest and most minor accomplishments, Flanagan had an agenda most of us can scarcely comprehend.

Flanagan barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. We are all connected, all a click away from showing the world what we’re up to at any given moment. This distorted use of the technology and the platforms makes me wonder if more of this will seep through as those who’ve become unmoored from society seek a voice and a way to communicate their pain, anger or frustration.

I’m not ready to give into that dystopian view. Flanagan hasn’t ruined technology or social media. His crime makes me no less of a champion for the two, either. But it does reveal some fundamental truths: Our vaunted technology is not as smart as we give it credit for. It doesn’t know the difference between enlightenment and carnage. It doesn’t discriminate. You can show anything on it.

That’s what Flanagan did. I wish I could un-see what I saw, and hope the world never has to see its like again.

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